To disagree with 3/4 year old children having more childcare paid for

I feel the goverment should pay for education rather than childcare. 15 hours a week is enough to meet a child's educational needs for pre school. At a time of austerity, I feel there are bigger spending priorities. (Providing enough school places for children who are of complusory school age!)

If you choose to have chidlren then you should pay to look after them. I feel that labour's set of proposals are totally unaffordable and making the "banks" pay will damage the UK financial sector long term.

At a time of austerity it benefits the country to help young fit people (which parents of small children mainly are) be available to work. It also helps the children settle into early years education instead of doing it half assed. Call it an investment.

It is in the economic interests of the country as a whole for parents to be able to go back to work. If people are out of the jobs market for a long time, it is hard to go back. This policy facilitates work. This is the first labour policy I have agreed with for some time.

It will also enable more women to continue working, whereas the insane cost of childcare is often so much money that it's often more cost effective to stay home, especially if you have more than one child.

I take it your bigger spending priorities don't include paying benefits to families where people are perfectly capable of working, want to work, but can't find jobs to fit round 15 hours of childcare?

Personally I don't think it should be compulsory to use the extra hours, but if it helps families get out of the benefits trap, or simply gives a leg-up to families who already pay huge amounts for nurseries, then I'm all for it.

In my own situation, DS couldn't use his 15 hours at the school pre-school he attended, because the hours couldn't work with my job. (although of course we then qualified for a subsidy on his nursery charges) I think the school nursery would have been a better setting for him and would have perhaps picked up on his SNs more quickly. If I'd had 25 hours to work with, I could have made that happen - with 15 there was no way it could fit with work hours.

I'm all for personal responsibility and not having children unless you have thought long and hard about how you are going to raise them, etc.

However, we live in a society. If you don't want people to live outside of the system, you have to help them to live within it.

Having children is a strong biological urge and ensures the survival of our species. It is not a lifestyle choice in the same way as choosing a career, living in London, etc, although the timing and number of children may be a reflection of lifestyle. There is certainly an argument for saying more than 1 or 2 is socially irresponsible if you know can't afford them, but unless you are prepared to stand up and say only the rich should have children, you have to accept that most people will need their society's support to become parents. Full-time childcare in the UK is out of the reach of most parents.

So unless you want to practice eugenics you have to provide support for childcare if you want parents to work.

I think it would be better if people could choose how to use the 15 hours. Many settings state that you can use a maximum of 3 a day, which isn't exactly helpful if you do (for example) compressed hours over 3 days like I do. We found a setting that would let us use 2 sessions a day, so 6 hours, which is much more useful for working parents.

This is a brilliant idea. I work full time and take home no money after childcare is paid, some people pay to go to work after they have paid their childcare. This will at least make working worthwhile and will be a step in the right direction to making work pay. I think its right to give incentives to people in work rather than take away from people out of work.

It's quite obvious that Labour don't really have a clue and are just going to throw any populist policies out before the election in the hope that they will appeal, regardless of whether they are affordable or not, or put the country into even more unpayable debt. Miliband doesn't look like he can run a bath, nevermind the country.

I currently pay childcare for 3 children amounting to around £1000 per month. This would reduce the bill by about £120 per month, which would then be spent in the economy. I do worry about where the preschool places will come from though, the one my children attend actually only offers 24 hours anyway as they are not open Thursday or Friday afternoons. But I think childminders can offer the free hours now anyway?

If you need 8 - 10 hours a day for several under 5s it is pretty expensive. This is not likely going to have much of an impact if you are both out working from about 7.45am to 6pm every day as plenty of couples are with under 5s.

It's quite obvious that Labour don't really have a clue and are just going to throw any populist policies out before the election in the hope that they will appeal, regardless of whether they are affordable or not

See also: every party not in power. Ibwas reading the Greens policies the other day and kept thinking 'that'd be nice, but how will you do it?'.

We have a primary school places crisis in the UK, surely that should take priority. In my areas primary school children are having to travel 2 miles to school because of a lack of places.

Childcare costs don't end when children leave pre school. Surely the money would be better spent on improving and increasing after school provision.

Our school has an afterschool club and the stupid new head has decided to limit the club to 24 places. (It used to have a maximum of 40 places) Now there aren't enough places for all the chidlren who need after school care and older primary (year 5 and year 6) school children are becoming latchkey kids or are being picked up by older siblings.

As a SAHM who wanted to spend time with her 3-4 year old, I say Balls to that!

I would far, far rather the government used the money to ensure all schools had affordable afternoon nursery and wrap round before and after school care.

Stop treating SAHM (and Dads) as second class citizens and trying to force us back to work. Give us affordable child care from 3-13 so we can choose to work when the time is right for our DCs and our family budgets!

It wouldn't be mandatory, Starball! You could be a SAHM just like I could continue to use DM. I don't see how giving women (it is mainly women we're talking about) the option of free childcare equates to treating anyone who chooses not to use it as a second class citizen.

reallytired XpostExactly the situation here, I'm stuck being a SAHM because I've been out of work too long.

Plenty of child care for 1-5 yearolds in nice nurseries and play schools, but very little for older DCs. It's a rural area, nursery catchments are huge (10 Mile radius for some). If they run after school clubs, they pick up from their village school 1/2 a mile down the road. No use at all for most of their preschool families.

Our primary got before/after school care the day DD2 entered Y7 before that the village had one massively oversubscribed CM.

So having no GPs or friends available to provide child care I was up a gum tree.